Dr Mansoor Ali has written a historical repertory, based exclusively on the Keynotes and Redline symptoms of the Materia Medica, written by Dr Adolph Von Lippe. Since my college days, Lippe’s Redline Symptoms was one of my favorite books. What impressed me was his style of giving intensity to the indications in materia medica. The dictionary meaning of ‘Summum Bonum’ is the “supreme good” in which all moral values are included from which they are derived. As the title indicates, it is one good work by Dr Mansoor Ali, who is a well known teacher in repertory and has helped many young doctors to achieve their goals through his web portal similima.com and homoeobook.com. This authentic work is the outcome of his years of study, practice and teaching repertory on various platforms. I hope that his book will help not only the young aspirants, but the senior homeopaths as well.

Day by day, our repertories are increasing in size by including new chapters, new rubrics, new remedies etc. It is good to have more information, but the more we have, the more we get confused, especially when we are in front of a sick patient who is in agony. That is the reason Phatak’s repertory is still preferred by many, as it has limited rubrics and remedies that were verified repeatedly in practice.

This book is useful for the management of acutes and bedside cases, both for busy practitioners as well as beginners. Dr. Ali’s intention is not to replace the works of Lippe and the traditional repertories but to find an easy tool that can complement the exhaustive literature we already have.

The author has given great importance to the details about Dr Lippe, his life and his works in the field of Materia Medica. Also included is one article by Lippe, ‘The classification of remedies’. The ground plan of this book is the same as that of Synthesis Repertory. Symptoms are divided in groups and then the Side-Time-Modalities-Extension arrangement of Kent. The rubrics are arranged from generals to particulars. There are 32 chapters, from Mind to Generalities. Grading of drugs is given in bold, italics and Roman as per the intensity. The information given by other authors are also provided in abbreviations at appropriate places.

We have often discussed the disadvantages of traditional repertories, such as poor representation of rare remedies, nosodes, sarcodes etc. Dr. Ali includes 234 remedies, both polychrests and rare ones. Also included are nosodes and sarcodes. He has used the modern terminologies, excluding the outdated terms that provide less clarity.

A few noteworthy rubrics I found:

Mind – Apologies – Unmoved by: Nit Acid

Vertigo – Labyri nthic: Ther

Head – metastasis other organs from: Cupr

Eye- Cellulitis orbital: Rhus tox

Vision – night blindness: Phys

Ear – Catarrh – Eustachian tube: Merc D

Hearing – Crackling – Chewing on: Nit ac

Nose- Epistaxis – frequent: bry, Thlas

Face – Hang down jaws: Op

Mouth – drink greedily: Hell

Teeth – wisdom tooth ailments from: Mag c

Throat – mucus –collection in throat, raised up unable to: Caust

Stomach – thirstlessness – dryness of mouth and throat with: nux m

Abdomen – diarrhea as if would come: Aloe

Rectum – control sphincter control lost: Mur ac

Stool – chopped – spinach: arg n, cham

Urinary organs – Bladder- prolapse: staph

Urinary organs – Kidney – dropsy – renal: apoc

Urinary organs – Prostate – swelling- old men with urging to urinate: staph

Urinary organs – Urethra – constriction: Clem

Urine – Milky – Standing while: cina

Genitalia – Male – Balanitis: Ham

Genitalia – Female – Cancer – cervix: Iod

Larynx – Pain- Talk unable to: phos

Respiration – asphyxia neonatorum: ant t, bov

Cough – anger on: ant t

Expectoration – sweetish: stann

Chest – distress precodial: camph, stront c

Back – softening spinal cord: pic ac

Extremities – Grow, nails out of shape: Graph

Sleep – drowsy – always: Gels

Chill – vomiting with: Eup per

Fever – Anticipating: nux vom

Perspiration – sour: Rheum

Skin – Desquamation: Am c

Generalities- atrophy muscular progressive: Phys

I found a few typographic errors, which I hope will be edited before the next reprint. I also found some rubrics, which are known to have many remedies, but having only one drug in this work. Of course, this book shows the intensity of drugs as mentioned in Lippe’s work, hence we can’t expect all drugs given in other repertories. Under such situations, we can compare the same with rubrics of other repertories. Hence, I would like to suggest that the author make a computer repertory tool so that it can be used practically in the repertorisation process, and the rubrics can be compared easily.

At the end, I can say with confidence that we have one more tool that can be kept along with Phatak’s repertory for bedside prescribing and also for the study of materia medica using a repertory.

About the author

Muhammad Rafeeque

Dr Muhammed Rafeeque is Medical officer, Dept. Of Homoeopathy, Govt. of Kerala. He is the author of Be a Master of Materia Medica, Rapid prescribing, Drug Addiction and Its Side effects- A Homoeopathic Approach, and A Capsule of Materia Medica. He has authored over 100 articles and/or cured cases on Homeopathy. Dr. Rafeeque has presented papers at various National and International seminars, including the LIGA Conference at New Delhi, PPHM Seminar at Malaysia and Skoura International seminar, Morocco. He was the IRB member of the American Medical College of Homeopathy, and the advisor of ARHFC, Canada.